January & February 2026

TMSE IB Newsletter

January/February 2026

IB Primary Years Programme

1st Grade Spotlight

First Grade IB Project: 
Celebrating Family Traditions Through Food

First grade students recently completed a meaningful IB project centered around family traditions and cultural connections. Each student contributed a special family recipe and shared why it is important to their family. They also included the ingredients and directions, and families helped bring the project to life by sending in photos of students cooking or baking their recipes at home.
One student shared a recipe for latkes, a traditional food made during Hanukkah. The following week in class, students read a story about Hanukkah that mentioned latkes. This gave the perfect opportunity to connect learning to real life! The student shared her cooking photos with the class, and proudly explained why latkes are important to her family and their traditions.
This project allowed students to learn from one another, make personal and cultural connections, and celebrate the diverse traditions that make our school community so special. We are so proud of our first graders for their hard work, curiosity, and pride in sharing their family stories!

The Key Concepts

These support higher order thinking and provide lenses for considering knowledge related to the central idea in a range of ways.

Form - What is it like?

Function - How does it work?

Causation - Why is it as it is?

Change - How is it transforming?

Connection - How is it linked to other things?

Perspective - What are the points of view?

Responsibility - What are our obligations?

(ibo.org)